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Instructions to police to “own the streets” led to mass violations of rights, excessive use of force and law-breaking by officers who were “blindly following orders” during the June 2010 G20 summit, the province's police complaints watchdog has concluded.

Police kick protesters as they attempt to clear the grounds of the Ontario legislature on June 26, 2010. (RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO)

By Jennifer Yang, Jayme Poisson and Amy DempseyStaff Reporters

Wed., May 16, 2012

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair said there are things that “could have been done better” during the G20 summit, but refused to apologize for or comment on specific allegations of misconduct by superior officers laid out in a scathing report from the province’s police watchdog.

“I think that there is an appropriate place for that to be determined,” Blair said at a news conference at police headquarters Wednesday, referring to police tribunal hearings.

The chief did not take the findings of the report as fact, instead saying he would reserve his judgment until tribunal hearings are held.

Blair also refused to apologize on behalf of the force for human rights violations that took place during the G20 summit in June 2010, saying his job is to hold his officers accountable.

“Generally, I think the rights of our citizens were protected that weekend,” Blair said, except, he added, “in individual circumstances.”

“I am quite prepared to hold people accountable,” he said. “If there is misconduct, we’ll deal with that.”

Blair said he accepts the recommendations made by Gerry McNeilly of the Office of the Independent Police Review Director.

McNeilly’s report concluded high-ranking Toronto police commanders overreacted during the G20 summit and assumed an “autocratic structure,” with superior officers — including Blair, according to one superintendent — disseminating orders to “own the streets” and take them back from the “terrorists that were attacking our city.”

The result on the ground, according to the sweeping report, was officers “blindly following orders” and using excessive force, “ignor(ing) the basic rights of citizens under the Charter,” and acting unlawfully when they boxed in hundreds of people at the Novotel hotel and at the intersection of Queen St. and Spadina Ave.

But some officers on the ground strongly disagreed with orders coming from the top, and one officer accused the Major Incident Command Centre (MICC) of being “maniacal,” according to an audio recording quoted in the report. Other officers disobeyed direct orders to corral people at Queen and Spadina and “personally removed non-protesters and peaceful protesters.”

The highly anticipated 300-page report — released Wednesday by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) — is the most comprehensive probe into police actions during the June 2010 summit weekend to date.

At Queen’s Park, Attorney General John Gerretsen said he pored over the report on Tuesday night and vowed to take action.

“We obviously take these reports very seriously … and I’ll be working both with my ministry and our … Ministry of Community Safety to implement some of the recommendations,” he told reporters Wednesday.

Gerretsen said it was important “to make sure that these kinds of occurrences … reported on will not happen in the future.”

“I will be taking the appropriate action in due course. I can’t give you an exact timeline,” the attorney general said.

According to the report, officers told the OIPRD they were ordered to investigate anyone carrying a backpack and anyone wearing a disguise (such as gas masks, balaclavas or bandanas), thus violating citizens’ basic Charter rights.

Poor documentation made it impossible to know exactly how many people were arrested, the report said. In his own review of the G20, Blair said the total was 1,118; the OIPRD report, however, estimates at least 1,140 people were arrested.

The OIPRD review found that police officers at the G20 were woefully ill-prepared — with officer training “largely delivered electronically” — and that officers from out of town had trouble finding their way around the city, with one using a “rudimentary map from a subway box.”

The temporary detention centre on Eastern Ave. was “poorly planned, designed and operated,” leading to “gross violations of prisoner rights.” Although many prisoners were arrested for “breach of peace” violations, there was no plan in place at the temporary jail for how breach-of-peace arrests were to be processed.

According to the report, police switched tactics on Saturday, June 26, shortly after black-clad vandals broke out from peaceful protest marches and began vandalizing property and torching police cars.

In a statement to the OIPRD, incident commander Mark Fenton said a meeting was held at the major command centre to address the outbreak of violence. Many people were in attendance, including the chief, who “appeared to be angry and frustrated in his demeanour.”

“At a point where there was silence, I asked the question, ‘Why are we not arresting these people?’” Fenton is quoted as saying. “The chief responded by looking at me and saying, ‘That is a very good question, Mark.’”

Fenton said he also asked another incident commander how the situation had spiralled out of control.

“Superintendent Ferguson responded by shaking his head and saying words to the effect of, ‘I tried, but I could not get the public order to move’ … I asked them to move and I was told that they couldn’t.’”

Fenton took over control at that 5:25 p.m., according to the OIPRD report, and was told by a deputy police chief Tony Warr to “take back the streets.”

“I understood his instructions to mean that he wanted me to make the streets of Toronto safe again,” Fenton explained in the report. “He wanted the streets that had been made unsafe by the terrorists that were attacking our city to me made safe again by restoring order.”

In the early hours of June 27, the second day of the G20, Ferguson asked Fenton about direction from the chief. Fenton answered, “Own the streets,” according to the report.

The result, the report said, was an overreaction at the major command centre, “causing an almost complete clampdown on all protesters and the mass arrests.”

In total, officers contained people on at least 10 occasions during the G20. On the Esplanade and at Queen and Spadina, protestors were contained specifically to be arrested — a response that “conflicts with the policies and procedures of the Toronto Police Service, the Ontario Provincial Police, the RCMP, and most other police services,” according to the report.

“However, this tactic was part of one Incident Commander’s strategy to ‘take back the streets,’” the report said.

During the Queen and Spadina kettling, commanders on the ground made two requests to the major command centre at police headquarters: to use the LRAD — colloquially referred to as a “sound cannon” — to communicate with the crowd, and for an exit route for people to leave.

“Both requests were denied,” the report said.

The OIPRD also found there was mass confusion over the Public Works Protection Act, an archaic wartimes measure quietly amended ahead of the G20. Officers were under the impression that the act gave them the authority to stop and search people throughout the downtown core, the report said.

“Even the Toronto Police Chief was under the impression that this authority extended to a distance five metres from the fence, and, when the mistake was uncovered on the eve of the summit, the correction was not appropriately clarified to officers on the ground,” the report said.

According to NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, the OIPRD’s findings provide “more evidence that the government did the wrong thing” by using the obscure 1939 Public Works Protection Act at the behest of police.

“It’s another condemnation of the Liberals and what they’ve done and yet the premier still refuses to apologize and acknowledge that that’s exactly what happened here,” said Horwath.

OIPRD director Gerry McNeilly said his arm’s-length agency received 356 public complaints and investigators interviewed 200 civilians, 600 police officers and combed through tens of thousands of documents, videos and personal testimonies.

He made 42 recommendations in his report, including:

• Changes to the Police Services Act and police Code of Conduct that would impose a duty on officers to disclose potential evidence of misconduct

• Senior officers especially should not condone or distance themselves from the misconduct of subordinates or colleagues

• Toronto Police Service should exercise its discretion to expunge record of those people who were not charged or whose charges were withdrawn where it is not in the public interest to keep them.

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